The Best is Yet to Come

Monday, July 12, 2010

A few weeks ago, Drew and I were swimming at my mom and dad's house, and we started casually talking about buying a new house. We really like the house we're in, but we are definately starting to outgrow it (not with kids, we have just accumulated a lot of stuff in 3 years!). So we did some checking around, and found out we qualify for the FHA loan, which gives us a 4.5% interest rate and lets us keep our current house as a rental. Well, how could we say no?!?

So we found a house in Glenpool last week that we really liked.

Unfortunately, the FHA loan has certain requirements with it, and this house was too close to over head power lines, so it doesn't qualify for the loan, meaning we can't get it. We were both pretty bummed, but we both agreed it just meant there was something out there better for us.

So Saturday, we went over to a neighborhood called Providence Hills where I had seen a listing online. First of all, the neighborhood is awesome- it has a pool, a huge club house, a fully stocked pond, and a splash park. When we pulled into the neighborhood, I thought the listing must have been a mistake, all the houses looked way out of our price range.

But, to make a long story short, we ended up talking to a guy with Capital Homes, finding a completely different floor plan, and a corner lot we can build on. They are going to wave the $4,000 lot upgrade fee, pay our closing costs, and put in a full privacy fence! We are so excited, but still not trying to get our hopes up, because we still have to make sure the floorplan and lot qualify for the FHA loan. If it does, then we would start construction this week! And being in on the construction means we get to pick brick color, paint color, appliances, light fixtures, etc. So exciting, hoping it works out!

Friday, July 9, 2010

The dreaded, yet inevitable, has happened. We moved my sister to North Carolina last weekend, and I am heartbroken.

It all started last Autumn, when my sister applied for the one NICU fellowship at OU in OKC. She didn't get it, but immediately began getting calls from other programs all over the country asking her to come interview for them. She narrowed it down to about 4 schools and started flying all over the country to check them out.

She was offered a position in North Carolina, St. Louis, and a job on the floor at OU. It was a very difficult decision, one that included lots of tears, but she chose to go to North Carolina.

Even though we knew the day was coming, it didn't make it any easier. We drove 14 of the 18 hours last Friday. We being my mom, dad, sister, me, aunt Kemo, and Katie. We finished out the last 4 hours on Saturday and got the UHaul unloaded that evening. Sunday we went to the Biltmore Mansion, and let me tell you, it was amazing! We spent all afternoon and evening there, and topped it off with a fireworks show on the grounds of the estate. Monday we worked on unpacking the kitchen, and since I had to go back to work Tuesday, I left about 3 to fly home all by myself. My sis and dad drove me to the airport, and I sat in the backseat trying not to cry the whole time. When they dropped me off, I couldn't hold it in any longer, and I let loose.

My sister is my best friend. I keep telling myself it's only gonna be 3 years, but so far it's only been a week and I miss her like crazy :(

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Rules: Okay...you're tagged! You have to do this, too. Let others know a little more about you. Re-post this with your name followed by "ology." YOU! Yes, you, reading this. You're tagged. Please send your responses back to me also. Now that you know more about me than you probably wanted to know; be nice and play the game.

FOODOLOGY:*What is your salad dressing of choice? Ranch*Your favorite sit-down restaurant? I love Texas Roadhouse, Ted's, and Olive Garden. It depends on what type of food I'm in the mood for.*What is your favorite fast-food restaurant? Probably Taco Bueno*What food would you not get sick of if you were to eat it every day for 2 weeks? Spaghetti or pizza*What are your pizza toppings of choice? Cheese

BIOLOGY:*Are you right or left-handed? Right*What, if anything, have you had removed from your body? Well I had a nose ring put in that I removed on my wedding day- does that count?*What is the last heavy item you lifted? Boxes at work- we're moving next week*Have you ever been knocked unconscious? No but getting in a fist fight has always been one of my life goals*Have you ever fainted? A few times, I take after my mom

BULLCRAPOLOGY:*If it were possible, would you want to know the day you're going to die? I'm not sure, I kinda do*If you could change your name, what would you change it to? Sarah Carner Hayden Montgomery Shephard (I want to sound important, and a lot of last names gives you that)*How many pairs of flip-flops do you own? Tons, I keep them all in a big laundry basket*Last person you talked to? The drug rep that just came to my window at work*What Color phone do you have? Black iPhone

PASTOLOGY:*What's the last movie you saw in the theater? Date Night- hilarious!*Video or DVD? I'll take it one step farther- BluRay*Have you been in a car wreck? 3 last year :(*Have you caused a car wreck? According to the law, no*Last time you cried? I cry when I watch most TV shows*Have you ever felt like you hit rock bottom? Unfortunately*Name 3 things you bought yesterday? A scarf, lunch, baby cloths for a friend*Met someone who changed your life? My hubby*For better or worse? Definately better*How did you bring in the New Year? At Beau and Laci's*Would you go back in time if you were given the chance? To college*Who was the last person you took a picture of? Drew*What songs do you sing in the shower? Not really*Have you held hands with someone today? Nope*Last time you ate peanut butter and jelly? It's been a while*What were you doing at 12 a.m. Last night? Snoozing*What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up? Too early...

CURRENTOLOGY and FUTUROLOGY:*Missing someone? I'm sad to think of how much I'm gonna miss my puppy next week*Listening to? A baby in the waiting room*Watching? Nothing*Do you smile often? Yep*Worrying about? Not much, I mostly ignore my problems*Procrastinating about? Nothing really*Are most of the friends in your life new or old? Old*Do you like pulpy orange juice? Yuck, no*What's on your wish list for your birthday? Carrie Underwood tickets*Plans tonight? Going to iHOP and Madison's t ball game* Do you have an accent? No*If you could change your eye color, what would it be? I wouldn't*Does the future make you more nervous or excited? I try not to think about it, live in the moment

Thursday, February 25, 2010

So last night I had a "romantic" dream about Taylor Lautner. (And by romantic, I mean sex) It was weird in many ways. For one, you would assume it was Jacob I was lusting after, but it was the actual kid, not the character. It was also very true to life. I was really 25, he was only 18, Drew and I had split up, and Taylor and I met and had an automatic connection.

Unfortunately, being only 18, he was not a "master of the sexual arts" as my cousing Luke would say. But, in my dream, I vowed that I, with more experience, would train him in the art of womanly plessure. That was the end of the dream, but with my promise to make him into a "man," I'm wondering if there's more to come?

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Whew, I have been one busy girl here lately. I'll start with our adventures over the Christmas holiday.

Sunday the week of Christmas, my family and I went on our annual trip to Honor Heights park in Muskogee. We always go and eat at El Chico's and then drive through the park to look at the Christmas lights. It's a guaranteed good time :) Unfortunately on Sunday, the cough I had been fighting started getting much worse. My sister listened to my chest and heard a wheeze so we called my doctor (who is also our friend) and had her call in a steroid for me.

Monday at work, I kept having coughing fits, and the doctor I work for thought I might have pertusis (or whooping cough). So I got a swab jammed up my nose to find out. She also wanted me to start an antibiotic right away b/c if it was pertusis, it is very contagious and we have babies that come in that are not yet vaccinated against it. So Monday night, I waited at WalMart for an hour and a half on my prescriptions. I kept having coughing fits and people were looking at me like I had the plague! It was not a fun evening.

Tuesday was pretty uneventful, and I did start feeling a little better. Wednesday, bad weather started moving into town, and it got cold and snowy. I went to our church's Christmas candle light service, and coughed my way through praise and worship :)

Thursday was Christmas eve, and I had to work half a day but we got to close the office about 11am. I went straight home and Drew and I started the normally 2 hour journey to Ada. Because of the snow and ice, it took us close to 3 hours, but we made it safely thanks to my husbands wonderful driving skills. (I'm kissing up here, you'll see why later.) We spent Thursday afternoon/evening with Drew's dad, and then stayed the night and woke up at his mom's house. We spent the morning and lunch with her, and headed home about 2pm to see my family Friday night. We went down through Stroud and got on I-40 to go home, which is usually a good route. My dad called and told us a semi had wrecked on I-40 so we needed to exit at Kellyville, which is before our normal exit, but can still get us home. About 4 miles before the Kellyville exit, traffic came to a dead stop. We turned off the car and sat for over an hour. We had Hank with us, so we took him for a little walk in the freezing cold, where he tried to lift his leg on every tire around. The problem, we found out later, is that a semi had jack-knifed and was sitting across both lanes of traffic and was in a position where he couldn't move out of the way. So we were all waiting on a tow truck to come save the day. We did eventually get home, unload the car, and go to my parents for Christmas.

Saturday was the entire Carner family Christmas at my parent's house. It was quite an adventure getting there. We were going to take my car, which is a little SUV, but does not have 4-wheel drive. We backed out of the driveway, and as we started to try and drive up our street, we slid about 3 houses back. We were stuck. A little while later, our neighbors helped us get the car back into our driveway, and we were going to drive the Jeep instead. It hadn't been driven in a while, so Drew had to work on it for a little bit to get it running. It didn't have insurance or a current tag, and Drew was convinced he was getting arrested for driving it. It started over heating two different times on our normally 20 minute drive and we had to pull over to let it cool down. We then had to stop at WalMart, who had apparently not yet cleared their parking lot, and almost got into 3 different wrecks while in the parking lot. After we got what we needed, we headed back out. 3 hours after beginning our journey, we finally made it. Needless to say, we were both a little irritated. But Christmas was great and we had a lot of fun.

Sunday, we decided to not even chance the roads and had my dad come pick us up for our next-to-the-last Christmas. We went to my aunt Kathy's house to celebrate with my mom's family. My cousin has a 2 year old little boy name Jaden, and Drew and I spent most of our time playing with the new toys he got from Santa. You should have seen Drew playing with Jaden's linkin' logs, he was so serious and all about it, it was too cute. Sunday night Drew and I were tired from all the traveling and excitement, so we just hung out at home and went to bed early.

Monday was our last Christmas celebration with my aunt Kemo and Katie. We went to mom and dad's, ate pizza for dinner, watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (another tradition) and openend presents. We love Kemo and Katie and hanging out with them is always a good time.

Tuesday and Wednesday were, thankfully, pretty uneventful. Thursday was New Year's Eve, and my third and final wreck of 2009. We had been using my dad's Jeep due to the lack of tag on ours. The weather and roads were finally pretty clear, so we were returning the Jeep on our way to my cousin's house for the New Year's festivities. Drew drove the Jeep to Glenpool, and I followed him in my car. Mistake #1- after dropping off the Jeep, I just said I would drive since I was already in the driver seat of my car. We were pulling out of Keifer when I hit the black ice. Mistake #2- turning into the spin like I have always been told. My car started spinning left, so I turned the wheel left. But, because the other lane of traffic was dry, this turned out to not be such a good idea. When my car hit the dry pavement in the other lane, it turned us around so that we were facing opposite of our original direction. Then we hit the grass. Mistake #3- keeping on the brakes. We slid sideways down the hill straight for a ravine bordered by trees. I grabbed Drew's arm and said "What do I do?" His response- "Just stand still." What? That in no way helps me! We stopped about 4 feet from the tree line. It is by the grace of God and His grace alone that neither of us nor my car were damaged in any way. If I had had new tires on my car (which I need) chances are, when I hit the dry pavement, the new tires wouldn't have slid like mine did and we would have flipped. It had finally warmed up the past couple of days which caused a lot of the snow to melt and the ground to be very muddy. If we hadn't have the mud, we would have hit frozen ground, and instead of sliding down the ditch, we probably would have flipped. The back end of my car came around more than 180 degrees so we were kinda sliding down the hill at an angle. If we would have been perfectly sideways, we probably would have flipped. So as scary as it was, God saved us, no doubt about it. We called my dad and he brought chains and was able to hook up to us from the road and pull us out. We went on to the New Year's Eve party and had a good time, even if I did fall asleep on the couch at about 1:30am :) My new year's resolution? No car wrecks in 2010.

The rest of the weekend went by just fine, until Sunday night. I got a call at about 9pm that my aunt and uncles German foreign exchange student had taken her own life in their driveway. I was in shock. Janne (pronounced Yanna) was the sweetest girl and none of us had any idea how unhappy she was. Drew and I offered to keep our little cousins, ages 6 and 3, to help out in any way we could. We had a "No Boys Allowed, Girls Club" sleepover. Those girls have way more stamina than me and we were up until 4am. We had a fun night, but it wasn't enough to erase the reality that Janne was gone. My aunt and uncle are really strugling through this, and it breaks my heart to see them hurt. My aunt ended up having a stress induced heart attack Tuesday night from all of this. Yesterday (Wednesday) was her memorial service. Two of her teachers spoke, one of her friends spoke, and a letter my aunt and uncle wrote her as if it were the summer after she left was read. It was very sad, but helped us forget the tragedy as we listened to their funny stories about Janne. It is hearbreaking, and will take time for my aunt and uncle to recover, and I continue to pray (and ask you to join me) for peace and comfort for both family and Janne's family back in Germany.

Lastly for this post, I have decided to take a study course for the MCAT. It starts next week and is every Tuesday and Thursday with some Friday's and Saturday's thrown in until April 6th. So I'm hoping I survive the class and that it raises my MCAT score because the school has told me it's the one thing keeping me out. Wish me luck!

Friday, December 11, 2009

I haven't posted in quite a while, but I really just don't have anything that exciting happening in my life these days. Here's a little bit of what's been going on lately:

Drew and I went to our alma mater's Homecoming on Halloween day. It was exciting for several reasons- my cousin Lauren was a Homecoming queen candidate (she won!!), Hank and I were driving her in the parade (and he had a Tiger costume to wear to support the good ole ECU Tigers), and it was our school's centennial. We had a really good time and a lot of my family came in to support Lauren, and I was glad they all got to see that school that I loved so much. We also got to catch up with friends, which is always a good time.

Thanksgiving was a blur of activity. We celebrated with my immediate family Wednesday night and then got up Thursday and drove 3 long hours to Alva to see Drew's family. I did get to meet the newest additions to the Brunsteter clan, Stella (~5 months) and Conrad (~2 months). We came home late Thursday to get up and go Christmas shopping Friday. We shopped, napped and then went to my cousin's house for game night. We play this game called Settlers of Catan, and we are all obsessed with it. We usually play into the wee hours of the morning because we just can't stop. Then Saturday we ate lunch with our cousins and went and saw Blind Side, which was awesome, I highly recomend it if you haven't seen it yet. Saturday evening we drove to Braggs to have Tree Trimming with the Carner family. And Sunday was a much needed day of rest.

It looks like Christmas is going to be just as busy. But I love this time of year, and I love spending time with family, so all the hustle and bustle is well worth it.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

First, let's clear up a few myths here. Anyone who has the flu right now has swine flu. The regular ole run of the mill seasonal flu has not yet reared its head. Also, due to the fact that the symptoms of the swine flu are much more mild than the seasonal flu, health care professionals aren't even treating for it unless you are under 5, over 65, or pregnant past your first trimester. The big stink about it is that it is new, period. It's not worse than the regular flu, it's not going to kill off half of the population, it's just the flu. The problem is that since it's new, no one has any immunity to it so it is spreading quite readily. But, if I can survive it, trust me, so can you.

Here's an overview of my battle with the pig:

Saturday was my birthday so I was spending a fun filled day with my family. We (we being my mom, dad, sister, me and Drew) went to Incredible Pizza for lunch and played games. Then Drew and I did some running around until 6:30pm when we went and saw "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" in 3D. That was pretty cool. Then we ate dinner at Cheesecake Factory. A little before the movie, my throat starting hurting a little, but I thought it was just allergies (which have been terrible this year). It got a little worse as the night went on, but nothing to terrible. When we got home from dinner, Drew gave me my present (a pink .38 revolver!) but I was so tired I basically went right to bed.

At 12:45pm on Sunday, Drew finally woke me up. I couldn't believe it, I never sleep that late. And I was still tired! So I basically just laid around on the couch the rest of the day. Around 5pm, I started feeling warm so I took my temperature- 100.0. Not to high, but still not normal. So I called in to work for Monday fearing it might be more than just allergies.

Monday was pretty much the same thing. I was completely exhausted. My joints were achey, my throat still kind of hurt, I had a headache, but most of all I was sooo tired. And my temperature all day Monday was only like 99.2-99.6. It never got back up to, or even over 100. So I called my boss again and she said I needed to go get a flu test. Drew and I went to Urgent Care and my temp was 99.1 and my flu test was negative. But the doctor said I definately had the flu, those tests are only accurate 10-50% of the time. Who knew? So he treated my for bronchitis, said lots of rest and fluids for the flu, and sent me on my way.

So now it is day 5, I'm still home from work, but I am finally feeling better. I know have a nasty sounding cough, but that's the bronchitits talking. The flu wasn't that bad. The most prominent symptom was that I was completely exhausted all of the time. Like today, even though I'm feeling better, I slept till almost 11am (which I never do) and I got up and tried to do some things around the house to get my energy back up, but I will probably take a nap in a little while to tell you the truth. It just sucked all the energy out of me that dern flu.

But the moral of the story is- I survived. It's really not that bad. My temp has been gone for 24 hours so I might try to go to work tomorrow even.

About Me

I am a newlywed struggling to figure life out. I am a very giving person, and I absolutely love buying presents for people. My family is the most important thing to me and I am very much a daddy's girl (yes, even at 23). Since I can remember, I have always wanted to be a doctor, and it's the thing I think about and work for every single day.